💜🤍💚 Repeal GRA 💜🤍💚 Liked a tweet & made it onto a list👹 Flushed out sheet music & a whole orange from a tuba once 😬
Folkestone Cretaceous
Joined April 2010
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Pip Cooper retweeted
Due to popular request, I'll have this available as a fine art print for a couple days. I called this piece "Of Stone and Science", and it is the full Hunter moon from 10/25. It's super detailed!
Get the print: cosmicbackground.io/pages/of…
Pip Cooper retweeted
An adorable Long Tailed Tit in my Somerset garden, as photographed from my bathroom window. 😀😍🐦
Pip Cooper retweeted
🖖🏻 Bonus Star Trek Trivia Question (to honor Walter Koenig)
What is Chekov's first name?
a. Sergei
b. Piotr
c. Aleksandr
d. Pavel
e. Vanya
Pip Cooper retweeted
25 OCTOBER 1854 The Charge of the Light Brigade, one of the most famous and tragic cavalry charges in British history, took place at the Battle of Balaclava in the Crimean War.
Lord Raglan, the British commander, sent an order "to prevent the enemy carrying away the guns". From his hilltop, the target was obvious. In the valley below, it wasn't. When Lord Lucan, who commanded the cavalry, asked which guns, the officer carrying the message, Captain Nolan, is said to have swept his arm towards the wrong end of the valley: "There, my lord, is your enemy! There are your guns!"
Lord Cardigan led about 670 men down a valley more than a mile long, with Russian guns firing on them from three sides. Nolan was one of the first to die.
They reached the guns, but at a terrible cost. About 110 men were killed and around 160 wounded, and roughly 375 horses died. Watching, the French General Bosquet said: "C'est magnifique, mais ce n'est pas la guerre." It is magnificent, but it is not war.
Cardigan survived. He reportedly went back to his yacht in the harbour to dine. That same day the 93rd Highlanders stood firm as "the thin red line", and the Heavy Brigade made a successful charge of its own, now largely forgotten.
Weeks later Alfred, Lord Tennyson immortalised the charge: "Theirs not to reason why, / Theirs but to do and die."
Behind the legend were real men and real families. Many survivors later fell into poverty, and some ended their days in the workhouse.
Today we remember their courage, and reflect on the responsibility of those who command others in war.
Courage should never excuse failures of leadership.
Pip Cooper retweeted
The premise of this ad depends on viewers recognizing that a girl has good reason to be alarmed by an adult man in a women's restroom -- it relies on people recognizing that men in little girls bathrooms are a problem.
The central problem with the Democratic Party's position in this ad is that Democratic policy treats the sex-based boundaries of girls as a problem for trans people.
Apparently, a girl's fear matters when the man is a Republican. But, the Democrats don't see a problem when that man says he is a woman. Does her discomfort suddenly become prejudice based on a man's sincere promise tonher that he is also a girl, just like her?
In the Democratic party's policy, if you replace the Republican man with any man and call him a woman, the little girl is now expected to:
- stay and be potentially subjected to indecent exposure or voyeurism without redress should it occur
- leave and find a male-free space to protect her privacy and personal boundaries,
- try to suppress her needs until she can relieve herself privately,
- avoid drinking water or fluids or eating things that might require a space to relieve herself,
- remain silent despite feeling frightened and uncomfortable with the man's presence, or
- face punishment for objecting.
Either her privacy and boundaries matter, or they don't. A change in someone's declared and undefined "gender identity" doesn't make her concerns disappear. Having to call the man "woman" doesn't make the situation any less frightening.
And then there's the “genital inspector” fantasy of the Democrats.
The Democratic party is suggesting this is a solution that has actually been proposed by Republicans when they are the only people talking about it or suggesting it.
Can the Dems identify:
- which law requires strangers to inspect children's genitals?
- who proposed stationing inspectors in bathrooms?
- why enforcing sex-based protections requires genital inspection?
People generally know their own sex. They can understand the rules and comply without physical examination. Sex is routinely recorded at birth, and existing documentation provides less intrusive means of resolving genuine disputes.
Besides, sex isn't defined solely by genital appearance. Surgery can alter appearance without changing sex.
So what assumptions are the Democrats making tha makes genital inspections supposedly necessary?
That transgender people cannot recognize their own sex?
That trans people cannot understand the rules?
That trans people will deliberately disregard the rules or break they law? That trans people cannot be trusted to comply with the same laws and rules as everyone else without everyone being subjected to invasive genital inspections?
That the only way we can possibly know a person's sex is through the crudest form of sex verification?
Or, that the possibility that someone might break a rule means that everyone must be physically examined?
The Democrats invented an enforcement scenario, attribute it to the GOP and then condemn their opponents for supposedly demanding it. The Democrats are the people introducing genital inspectors into this debate, so they bear the burden of explaining why they're necessary. So the GOP should make them explain it and ask them which GOP law maker suggested the solution they are fantasizing about.
And they cannot use a frightened girl to make their political point without confronting the question their own ad raises:
Why is a girl's fear of a man in her restroom persuasive when it serves your campaign, but her right to object to sharing that space with males becomes negotiable when it conflicts with your gender-identity policies?
This type of scare ad is easily countered -- it is a Dem fantasy and only makes the GOPs reasons for championing Equal Rights for women and girls more evident.
Anyone swinging to the Democrats because of this ad, is an idiot. Any Democratic institution supporting this ad is idiotic.
🚨 BREAKING: This ad, when tested, moves swing voters 8 points away from Trump & Republicans.
THAT’S HUGE MOVEMENT.
Please share!
Turns out Americans don’t like creepy Republicans obsessing about their junk. 🤷♂️ #MAGAInYourBathroom
Pip Cooper retweeted
Anarchotyranny, coined by Samuel Francis in 1992, is a system where the state fails to control crime and disorder (anarchy) while oppressively punishing ordinary law-abiding people for minor or political acts (tyranny). The Solzhenitsyn quote illustrates the selective enforcement: a thief's knife is excused as tradition, but the same act by others becomes "terrorism."
Pip Cooper retweeted
This ministerial letter fails to engage with any of the substantial criticisms of the draft Conversion Practices Bill. The bill isn’t compatible with rights to family life, to free expression and to live in a society governed by a predictable, comprehensible criminal code.
Pip Cooper retweeted
🖖🏻 Today's Star Trek Trivia Question (Level: Easy-Intermediate)
The Prime Directive is a policy of:
a. Elevated consciousness
b. Non-violence
c. Pro-science
d. Non-interference
e. Colonialism
Pip Cooper retweeted
The lowest point of land in Britain is a cast-iron post in a Cambridgeshire wood, and when it went in the ground it was level with the ground.
Stand next to it now and it is four metres over your head.
It is at Holme Fen, south of Peterborough, and in 1851 this was the edge of Whittlesey Mere, the largest lake in southern England. A syndicate of landowners drained the lake that year for farmland, and the engineer, who knew what happens to peat when you take the water out of it, drove an oak pile through 22 feet of it down to the clay and cut the top flush with the turf. A column from the Crystal Palace replaced it. Then they stood back and watched the land go down.
Nine inches in the first year. Eight feet by the 1890s. Today the ground around that post is 2.75 metres below sea level, and the post is a ruler nobody asked for, sticking out of a birch wood with guy ropes holding it up because the soil that used to hold it up has gone into the sky.
That is what drained peat does. It dries, it shrinks, and it oxidises, which means it turns into carbon dioxide and leaves. Peat takes a thousand years to lay down a metre. Under the plough it loses a centimetre or two of that every year, and the Fens have been under the plough since the Dutch engineers arrived in the 1600s. Peat soils farmed for crops are among the largest sources of carbon dioxide in Britain's whole land sector, and the fields doing it are growing lettuce.
Because that is what the Fens are for. A third of England's vegetables come out of this one flat black square: half the lettuce grown in Britain, three quarters of the celery, the carrots, the onions, the potatoes, the leeks, the beetroot. The bag of salad, the celery sticks, the chips. Every field of it is a few millimetres lower than it was last January, the pumps run day and night to keep the sea out of a landscape that is now beneath it, and the water the crops need is forecast to run short within ten years.
Before the drain this was eels, wildfowl, reeds, summer grazing, and a fen that had been quietly stacking carbon since the ice left. The cattle came and went on it for 5,000 years and the ground stayed where it was.
The salad has been on it for 170 years and the ground is four metres down. The post is still measuring.
Pip Cooper retweeted
Let me know when the Government advise removing an interior door and propping it against a wall, for blast shelter.
I do enjoy nostalgia for my childhood.
Pip Cooper retweeted
Come on @andyburnham
You can do this.
You don’t have to drive a diesel to pay for expensive diesel. You just have to buy food.
At a reported £2 a litre, road diesel costs run right through the food chain. Feed deliveries. Haulage. Refrigerated transport. Getting your food to your door.
We absorb increases where we can rather than putting our prices up. But that cost doesn’t disappear.
The government can’t control the world oil price. It CAN choose what it charges in fuel duty and VAT.
With more duty rises scheduled for December and March, next week’s Budget is a chance to change course.
If keeping food affordable is a priority, shouldn’t fuel tax be part of the conversation?
Pip Cooper retweeted
🖖🏻 Today's Star Trek Trivia Question (Level: Expert)
In which feature film does Janice Rand appear?
a. I. The Motion Picture
b. III. The Search for Spock
c. VI. The Undiscovered Country
d. All of the above
e. None of the above
Pip Cooper retweeted
Went to see Present Laughter at Liverpool Playhouse starring @TracyAnnO and @DreyfusJames they were brilliant
Noel Coward’s script sparkled under their experienced acting, timing, and stage presence was superb
I would urge everyone, if you get the chance, go!
Pip Cooper retweeted
Defra knew the new farm scheme could sell out on day one. They opened it anyway.
Their own forecasts, written in April and May, warned the SFI window could close the day it opened. It did. By 4pm, 12,204 farmers had applied for £263.96 million against a £253 million budget. Another 2,859 started an application and never got to submit. Ministers were advised about the day-one risk. Defra won't release the advice.
My take: farmers spent money on consultants and days not growing crops, preparing for a scheme that was a gamble from the start. Farming cannot run on gambles like this. And when Defra needs a pot worth up to £650,000 to teach its own staff how farming works, you can see the problem. Back farmers to grow food instead. That's my opinion. The documents are fact. No spin.
Sources:
Defra documents (gov.uk): gov.uk/government/publicatio…
Full release (PDF): assets.publishing.service.go…
£650k training contract (Telegraph, 7 Feb 2026): telegraph.co.uk/news/2026/02…
Pip Cooper retweeted
🖖🏻 Today's Star Trek Trivia Question (Level: Advanced)
What does Q bring Captain Janeway as a gift to try and win her affection?
a. Delavian chocolates
b. A quantum microscope
c. Sapphire earrings
d. A puppy
e. Bajoran lilacs
Pip Cooper retweeted
You'll notice that the rioters in France and Italy are only vandalising the agreeable parts of their country and not the run-down, tatty areas.
A tactic they apparently copied from the UK planning authorities.
Pip Cooper retweeted
Visitor: "Your sheep are all stood along the wall. Every one of them, facing the same way."
Farmer: "Rain's coming from the west. They've put their backs to it. Half an hour, I'd say."
Visitor: "The forecast says dry till tonight."
Farmer: "The forecast's in Exeter. The sheep are here."
Visitor: "You trust them over the Met Office?"
Farmer: "I trust them over my own knees. They came down off the top about two o'clock yesterday. The weather warning came through on my phone at five. Same storm. Three hours of notice, free, and nobody had to update the app."
Visitor: "How do they know?"
Farmer: "Pressure drops before the weather does. They feel it. The wind shifts a quarter and the whole flock turns like a weathervane that eats. A cow'll do the same. Backs to the weather, heads down, bunched into the hedge before you've felt a drop."
Visitor: "I thought cows lying down meant rain."
Farmer: "Cows lying down means cows are lying down. They do it fourteen hours a day. If that meant rain we'd have drowned. The tell's the wall, and the bunching, and the one old ewe who starts walking home when nothing's happened yet."
Visitor: "Do they ever get it wrong?"
Farmer: "They got the storm in October 1987 right. The Met Office famously didn't. My dad had the cattle in the low field by dinnertime. He never explained how, because he didn't need to. He'd watched them."
Visitor: "Could you not just look at the sky?"
Farmer: "I do. Then I look at what the sky's looking at. The sheep have been standing on this hill since before there were satellites, and every one that read the weather wrong got eaten or blown away. What's left is the ones that didn't. Natural selection's a decent forecaster."
[The first drops arrived on the visitor's glasses. The sheep had not moved. They'd already finished.]
